A Plague of Reveries
by potatopeeler
Summary: He had every right to moan about his treatment, but when it came down to it, it wasn't just the pathetic state his essence repeatedly degenerated into under Mandrake's control that bothered the djinni, but something else altogether. Slight Bart/Ptolemy.


Disclaimer: I don't own the Bartimaeus trilogy or any of its characters.

Note: This takes place somewhere around the middle of Ptolemy's Gate, mostly because I have not yet finished the book (I am quickly devouring it, though) but also because I was hit with inspiration. As this is my first fic in I don't even know how many years, constructive criticism is always appreciated.

* * *

Bartimaeus was known to mercilessly hound his masters for a relief of duty now and then if he was not regularly given them; his relationship with Mandrake was no different. However, he had seldom had a master as severe as Mandrake in this regard. The boy (that's what he was, really; at best, he was a poor excuse of a man) rarely let him out of his paranoid grip to heal himself in the Other Place, and when he did, it was only out of necessity for Bartimaeus' life. Of course, Bartimaeus had every right to moan about this unfortunate treatment, but when it came down to it, it wasn't just the pathetic state his essence repeatedly degenerated into under Mandrake's control that bothered the djinni, but something else altogether.

Well, for one thing, he had a tendency to lose his focus more easily the longer he stayed bound to this dreaded ball of soil. Besides making it easier to get into his usual sticky situations during the ridiculous missions Mandrake sent him out on, it made staying in the present that much harder. Bartimaeus was already fighting, near constantly, not to reminisce about Ptolemy. (Taking his form so often made it even harder, and he frequently wondered why he put himself through that sort of thing. To be honest, his favoring Kitty Jones' shape nowadays wasn't _just_ to disconcert his master.) But with his concentration so frayed, he found himself thinking of the dead boy dozens of times a day.

It was getting to be unbearable. Even when Bartimaeus was at the top of his game, it was difficult to take Ptolemy's form without a swift pang of grief. (Not that he'd ever admit it.) Now it was downright impossible. So he switched to taking Kitty's form, in a weak attempt to make his master feel the same as how he made him feel every day he kept him chained to this blasted rock. (And sometimes, it worked. He could see it in the boy's eyes.)

It was torturous, how he would remember the boy with an interrupted flow of memories. Suddenly, during a trailing assignment or a run to the drycleaner's for one of Mandrake's pretentiously stylish suits, the heat of Egypt would wash over him and he would feel sandals and dirt roads beneath his feet rather than the harsh concrete of London. Ptolemy's laugh would ring through his head as if the boy were mere feet away amid the crowd of commoners surrounding him. He would forget, quite often, that he was returning to Mandrake and his admiring assistant rather than Ptolemy and his questions and friendship. Whether or not he was bored, he would recall the boy's calm smiles and politely sarcastic replies to one of his jokes (he had picked up the sarcasm from Bartimaeus). More commonly as the weeks passed, his mind would shut down and he would immerse himself in a fantasy of Ptolemy, reliving a conversation they once had or dreaming up a new one with the questions he's been wanting to ask the boy for hundreds of years, only to be wrenched back to the present with a shock to his essence and the sight not of the ancient Library and its youngest frequenter but of dreary, twenty-first century England.

And so Bartimaeus would demand of his master his brief freedom to end just a bit of his suffering (it would never stop completely until a marid, or more likely at this point in time a measly fellow djinni, engulfed his tired essence), and each time Mandrake refused, Bartimaeus would think of how different he was from Ptolemy.

* * *

A quick poll! I have decided it's my current mission to fill this site with more Ptolemy love, but that involves the awkward issue of footnotes. I've seen them done directly in the paragraphs or with them at the end of the fic itself (which I find annoying if the chapter is of any substantial length). So what do you readers prefer? I had actually written this in third person to avoid this problem and ended up with parentheses everywhere since it's pretty much impossible to write Bartimaeus without wanting to add a million side notes.


End file.
